Due to recent advancements in technology, home appliances are increasingly including “smart” features that are capable of performing intelligent or complex tasks in addition to their traditional functionality.
As an example, certain appliances can engage in wireless communication over a local or wide area network. For example, the appliances can include one or more data communication components for transmission and/or reception of data using radio frequency signals.
Using such wireless communication capabilities, the appliances can provide additional, advanced features, such as, for example, the ability to adjust appliance settings remotely. As another example, wireless communication can be used to communicate with various other appliances or devices included in the same household to provide an enhanced user experience, to reduce energy usage, or other smart features.
However, because appliances often engage in household tasks associated with increased or decreased temperatures, the data communication components can be subjected to significant temperature fluctuations.
As an example, in the instance that the appliance is an oven or other cooking apparatus, the data communication components (e.g. modem, antenna, associated circuitry, etc.) may continually be subjected to fluctuations in temperature from about room temperature to an elevated temperature associated with cooking operations. As another example, appliances located outdoors or in a home garage may be subjected to high temperatures during the summer and low temperatures during the winter.
It has been recognized that significant temperature fluctuations or certain temperature ranges can greatly affect the performance of various data communication components. In particular, as various data communication components heat or cool, their physical or electrical properties may correspondingly be affected, thereby drastically changing the tuning of the data communication circuits.
As a result, the data communication components may experience an increased level of communication failures. For example, an increased number or percentage of communication packets may be lost or otherwise failed to properly communicate and, therefore, the data communication components may have to engage in an increased number of retries.
Thus, if the data communication settings or operations do not take into account such variations, then communication quality can be degraded or otherwise rendered inoperable.
Therefore, a need exists for systems and methods for updating appliance communication settings so as to compensate for temperature fluctuations.